A Cavalry of Women
by Initial A
Summary: A look on the through-line from Peggy, at the very beginning of SHIELD, to Sharon, at the end. A look at how Melinda, Maria, Natasha, and Sharon came to join SHIELD, and how each of them inspired and motivated the others to succeed. A look at the women of SHIELD and how each of them (though very different) are ultimately the best at what they do.
1. Peggy Carter (1950)

**A very big thanks to idoltina for continuing to be the best beta ever, and always surprising me with feedback.**

**Natasha's chapter contains a lot of trigger warnings, due to the nature of her history in the Red Room.**

**This was originally posted as part of the MCU Ladies Halfamoon Exchange 2015 on AO3, as a gift for Beatrice_Otter. Everything is mainly consistent (and can play around) with MCU canon up to episode 5 of Agent Carter, aired on Feb. 3, 2015.**

* * *

It's dull.

Howard can see it, Colonel Phillips can see it. It's a problem.

But it's not taking lunch orders.

But it's _dull._

She needs a project. Peggy sighs, turning away from her paperwork to look out at the world from her lofty perch in the newly built headquarters. The Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division-yes, its a mouthful and she was putting in the paperwork to shorten it as soon as she found the correct forms-is finally lifting off. They've received enough grants and funding and approval from the government to move out of the basement at Camp Lehigh. Howard funded and outfitted the high-rise himself-he calls it the Triskelion, for the three branches that converge in the middle. Their recruits are doing well in the field, and she's even managed to make peace with Operation Paperclip.

The nestlings are being pushed out into the world, and Peggy feels a bit like a mother whose children have grown.

Restlessly, she clicks her pen. It's an annoying habit she picked up from somewhere-Howard, probably-but it helps her think, providing enough background noise to free up her brain. It's not that she doesn't enjoy her position as director, she does. She just… wishes there were differences she could make. There are too many unavoidable situations she finds herself in compromising positions for.

There is endless paperwork and rare opportunities for fieldwork. She craves those opportunities, when chaos reigns and the only option left is calling in Level 10. She hates herself for craving them-she _wanted_ peace, she _wanted _to take the wheel and keep everyone in line. But it's so _dull _and she wants to _scream _some days and-

And some days she wonders about Thompson and Dum-Dum and Sousa. How not everyone got to come home the same as they were when they left. Then she wonders if she's quite the same person as she was when she left.

She knows she isn't.

Howard and Phillips don't know what to tell her, and that's fine. If she wanted them to give her an opinion, she'd ask.

She also doesn't need their permission to form a new project. She just needs to _find _one. They have a partnership. They create their own divisions and run them-she oversees the communications division. Howard has his pet projects in the science division, and she knows he's been discussing the formation of an academy for younger recruits. Phillips has operations covered, for the most part. She helps there, mostly to keep busy when communications is calm, but also to keep the men sharp. They need to keep aware, hone their abilities, particularly if the Russians are-

Peggy pauses her pen clicking.

She's a damn fool, and shame on her for not seeing it sooner.

The organisation, particularly communications, is filled with women. Young things with bright eyes and rebellious streaks against their parents, older widows with sharp ears and a keen mind for piecing together gossip, middle-aged ladies who are tired of their old lives and crave a difference. Peggy has done everything she could, through all avenues-ladies magazines, soap operas, dance halls, tossing a coin and a word to known gossip-mongers, hell, even bribing someone to place slips in the damn sanitary napkin boxes-to get the word out that if you were a woman of age with certain qualities, apply for work.

Peggy wants them. She wants all of them.

Her old friend Angie has a flair for collecting and processing gossip. Peggy, through several links in the chain, had managed to position her in communications. Angie was now one of their top operatives-Peggy had watched her work one afternoon, fishing information out of one of their suspects like she'd been doing it her entire life.

It was a proud moment.

Peggy had personally gifted her with a whole case of schnapps the next afternoon. "You ain't half bad, English," Angie had said with a wink and a bump of hips.

But that's communications. Science and tech are still well-equipped with women-brilliant ones who took her breath away with the speed at which they worked and created and _lived_-but they needed more. She understands the current political climate outside of the division does not lead to encouraging girls into maths and sciences, but she hopes that if _anything_ were to come out of the current Soviet-American squabble, it would be that these girls will open their eyes and see to it that _everyone_ needed to pull their weight if they hoped to surpass the Russians.

Which leads her thought process to two separate entities, but in essence they are the same: operations and the Red Room.

The Russians are becoming a problem. She's no longer able keep track anymore of the number of sleeper agents who have attempted to worm their way into her division. Operations and communications land multiple, daily reports on her desk of subterfuge and a bitterly cold war growing between intelligence agencies. For now, most of the brunt of this underground war has been handled by the CIA and, at times, the FBI, but her own agents are starting to join the fray. And if Senator McCarthy has anything to say about it-and the winds gusting down from Capitol Hill hint that he has quite a _lot_ to say about it-the budding intelligence war will require all hands on deck soon.

Operations staffs mostly men. It's dirty and dangerous, and the times haven't changed enough for a lot of the preemptive sign-ups to commit to it entirely.

However, the Russians are using little girls. She's seen it. Little girls kidnapped, sold, or born into the Red Room, trained up to become young women with skills and intelligence, young women who wreak havoc and leave bodies in their wake. The Black Widows are an elite group of female fighters, and Peggy at once fears and admires them.

"We've been going about ops all wrong," she breathes.

She's made sure that ops are trained to recognise a Black Widow. They can't afford another Dottie. Ops can engage and disarm, recognise and subdue. But what they don't have are Black Widows of their _own_.

She's a damn fool, and should be stripped of her position. This should have been implemented the _moment_ she set foot in Camp Lehigh.

The Widows are more than fighters. They are a company of trained professionals pressed into a single person. She's read the files. They're trained in every possible art, able to adapt to any situation with ease. A Black Widow can perform in any situation-Peggy is certain that the one known Widow they keep tabs on has been seen at every major political fundraising event in the last three years, as well as dancing at a local gentleman's club and working as a housemaid for the family of a congressman-is fluent in at least six languages, trained in science and engineering. She is capable of entering, searching, and leaving a room while leaving no trace that she'd been there at all. She can detect and distill poisons. She can perform quick-changes of appearance that would make even a veteran Broadway performer weep with pride, and she can plot and execute tactical military manoeuvres with the precision of a five-star general.

A Widow, on the surface, is a blank slate upon which any role can be written and carried out with ease. Underneath, where the gears turn, is where the danger lies.

"Not unlike a well-placed pistol under your skirts…" Peggy murmurs, writing out her thoughts.

The operations division doesn't need blank slates and chalk, they need _adaptable_ women. Smart women, _clever_ women. She's seen it in the faces of the men she's trained and worked with, how they underestimate her.

How quickly she's proven them wrong.

How quickly they return to underestimating her again.

They need a company of women-a cavalry, if you would-who are willing and able to utilise and weaponise that low estimation, turn it to their advantage.

Adrenaline rushes through Peggy's veins as she looks over what she's written. She just needs to find the right way to implement it.


	2. Melinda May (1979-1990)

Melinda May wants to fly.

From the time she was a little girl, she's looked up at the sky and wished that she could join the flocks of birds soaring and pitching through the air. And what if she could go higher, taste the clouds, feel their puffiness in her fingers?

She learned about clouds (every pilot needs a grounded understanding of meteorology, and her mother makes sure that her girl gets the grounding she needs to succeed) and then about Newton's laws of physics, and then about the mechanics of flight. It doesn't take the magic away but instead it expands it-she wonders how fast someone can fly before their insides turn to mush, how much force it would take to carry her to the moon, or to Mars, or beyond?

Melinda's always done well in tests, but her military entrance exams are off the charts. When the Strategic Homeland Intervention, Enforcement, and Logistics Division comes calling, her mother almost pushes her out the door to go with them. "They're the best," she tells her daughter. "You want to fly? Fly with the best."

At the academy, Melinda learns to do more than fly.

There are portraits on the walls of the operations academy. Colonel Phillips is stern and formal-a true military man-and Howard Stark looks like someone called his attention a moment before the flash went off. But Peggy Carter has always fascinated Melinda. Her hair is perfectly coiffed, and even Melinda can tell in the black-and-white photo that her lipstick is as red as blood. She looks determined and friendly all at once, and Melinda would give anything to be able to ask her the questions in her heart: how did she deal with being the lone woman among so many men? How did she carve out her own space? How did she become… _her_?

It's 1982, and Melinda finally has a chance.

She's the youngest female graduate of the Operations Academy, and Peggy Carter herself is there to honor her. The wings on her uniform are shiny and new, and Peggy Carter takes her aside at the end of the ceremony and Melinda all but screams her questions. Peggy smiles and asks her one simple question in return. "How would you like to join me and a few friends for tea tomorrow afternoon?"

Melinda almost faints.

She learns about the cavalry-Peggy says it with a bit of a sarcastic tint but also says the name kind of stuck-and the camaraderie of the women Melinda meets is almost overwhelming.

Because she gets it, what they went through-what they go through _now_, every single day of their lives. She _understands_.

She signs up in a heartbeat.

She becomes unrecognizable to herself, as she hones her skills and finds herself facing off against some of the most well-trained, well-organized women in the world. She finds a partner in Phil Coulson, someone she can trust to watch her back-after that first mission, anyway. And Phil introduces her to Andrew Garner, who would eventually become her husband.

With the cavalry, Melinda doesn't just fly-she _soars_. She's having the time of her life.

Until Bahrain.

Peggy is there when she returns as a changed woman with clipped wings. Melinda is already a legend in the halls of S.H.I.E.L.D., and she flinches every time the word 'cavalry' is mentioned near her. She doesn't want to distance herself from the other women, but she can't stand the collective name anymore.

"I hate to say it, but I've been looking for an excuse to change it for decades," Peggy says with a tired smile.

Peggy puts her nose to the grindstone, and Melinda tries to find her wings again. Phil helps. Andrew doesn't. Phil stays. Andrew leaves.

It takes a while to change everyone's mind, but eventually they come up with something. Only highly specialized agents are known only by a number. Peggy made sure to reserve a select few numbers for the women that stood out-any number ending in 3. She's Agent 13, and there are rumors of a new, up-and-coming rookie to take the place of Agent 33.

They're no longer the cavalry, but the Triad.

It sounds darker. Melinda likes that.

So she paints her wings black and learns to fly again.


	3. Maria Hill (1997-2002)

Maria Hill is fourteen when she submits a paper detailing the plausible causes and effects of World War III-and when S.H.I.E.L.D. comes calling at her door.

They have a place for her at their academy, the man, Agent Coulson, tells her. Her first instinct is to trust him-his face is earnest and radiates kindness-but her gut knows that just because someone looks kind does not mean they are. She stalls. She hems. She considers it.

Her mother tells her to take the chance and run.

Maria takes another day to think about it. She's a month shy of fifteen when she packs her bags for the S.H.I.E.L.D. Academy, and she never thinks about Arkansas again.

Her teachers call her calculating and brilliant. Her classmates call her cold and ruthless. Maria has the rulebook memorized within the year; standard operations come to her as easily as breathing. When she tires of-or is bored by-standard ops and procedures, she invents her own. By the time she graduates-a fully-qualified field agent at 19, the same age as the legendary Melinda May-she's revolutionized the way operations are handled.

The calling card she receives on graduation day from the Triad shouldn't come as a surprise, but it does. Maria fights like a man, operates like one, calculates like one. Is she really the kind of woman they want in Peggy Carter's elite fighting force? The kind who doesn't act like a woman at all?

Peggy Carter presides over the meeting silently. Maria feels Peggy watching her the entire time as nothing in particular is discussed. She feels like this in and of itself is a test, this sitting around a table in a private room at a well-to-do restaurant and discussing things like the weather and the current political situation. How does Maria feel about the outcome of the presidential election? What does she think President Bush's time in office will amount to?

Maria knows enough to answer every question as honestly as she can, but she looks at the matriarch of the group every time. She watches the older woman's face, immovable and calculating as she considers Maria's answers. Peggy is so different yet not from the portraits that had watched over Maria every day at the academy.

When Maria is offered a position in the Triad, she's unsure. She's heard of their work-studied it in operations, watched the rare footage comparing the American cavalry to the Russian Widows-but she's still unsure if it fits her.

"Why do you want someone like me?" she finally asks.

Peggy speaks for the first, and only, time to answer: "Because they still underestimate you. You'll work yourself to the bone, mimicking them and creating more new procedures to benefit yourself and them, but they'll always underestimate you. You are one of the best. We only take the best."

She's not sure about that. Still, she can apply what the Triad has to offer her to her work.

When 9/11 happens three months later and Maria gets run through the ringer in the deadliest games of intelligence warfare, she's still unsure of Peggy's words. The world has changed in 50 years, and it'll be even more different in the next 50 years.

It takes a long time for her to realize that Peggy's words are true-in a way. It's not that Maria's underestimated, it's that she's never first in line: she's second. In any major decision, she's asked second. Agent Hill, confirm or deny the leader's opinion? Agent Hill, does this comply with standard S.H.I.E.L.D. operations procedures? Agent Hill, can you redo our first choice's work because it's subpar and we realize-but can't admit aloud-our mistake in not choosing you first?

It's not that Maria likes being placed second. She actively dislikes it. But she learns to work within it. She knows every rule, every regulation, every procedure, every standard ops run. She can formulate an extraction plan in five minutes with minimal casualties.

Maria seeks out the leaders. She slips in a word here and there. She changes minds by reminding them of the rules.

They may underestimate her. But she is the unseen force behind them. They don't understand what would happen if she cut their strings.

And when Maria meets a Black Widow herself, she wonders again how anyone can underestimate someone so clearly pulling every string in the room. Even hers.


	4. Natalia Alianovna Romanoff (1991-2006)

**This chapter contains content dealing with food-related triggers, including bingeing and purging. It also contains references to dubcon and its aftereffects. It's not a kind chapter, and Natasha has not lived a kind life. This is how she takes control of it.**

* * *

Natalia Alianovna Romanoff is seven when she kills her sister. It's her first blood, marking her for life as a Black Widow. She is fed real food for the first time in days and throws up later-eating good food too quickly has a price.

It's another lesson she learns fast. Learning means winning. Winning means survival. Survival means…

There are years of blood and fire and screams. Years of pretty smiles, of every flavor of man bearing down on her, of acts she can't recall specifically but leave her with nightmares that have her pulling against her shackles.

Natalia learns not to dream.

She is fourteen-her hair still in plaits and her petite body made of muscle and her will as fierce as any tiger's-when a man almost twice her age shoots her pistols from her hands with a bow and a handful of arrows. She tells him to kill her. She is disgraced for losing her weapons in battle. She will be killed anyway-starved or thrown to the babies and left for them to practice on her until her bones are snapped like twigs. Like she did to Liliya.

He drops his weapon and holds out his hand. He offers her another chance.

Survival means breathing free.

Survival means learning to sleep without the cuffs, learning to eat what she wants _when_ she wants, learning to let people in.

Natalia slowly learns how to become Natasha, to leave the Red Room and her old sisterhood behind. She cuts off her braids and lets her hair fly free. She learns that Agent Barton is not only the best sharpshooter she's ever encountered, but he's also the oddest person she's ever met in her life. The first thing he asked, on the Quinjet out of Tel Aviv, was how many languages she spoke and if she could teach him how to say "can I pet your dog?" in all of them. He teaches her how to throw a playing card into the wall and make it stick, how to cheat at carnival games, how to fletch arrows.

He becomes her best friend. Her only friend.

Until her.

Natasha is seventeen and the world is going to hell. She's not stable enough yet to realize that this isn't her fight. She's supposedly been secluded away in the Triskelion, but in reality she's unscrewed the grates on the vents and escaped into the ventilation. She watches from above as S.H.I.E.L.D. agents call the shots and commands, working with the C.I.A. and the F.B.I. There are others too, what will eventually become the N.S.A. and Homeland Security.

The war on terror has started, and Natasha is sitting on the sidelines.

When she grows tired, she crawls back to her rooms and there is already a woman sitting on her bed. She's ancient-to a seventeen-year old, anyway-with gray hair that used to be brown and eyes that are still sharp and kind all at once. "You don't listen very well, do you?" she asks, and Natasha knows her accent is polished to hide the neighborhood she's from in London.

There's a staring contest, mahogany against moss, and eventually Natasha looks down. "Not anymore," Natasha admits softly.

"I've been looking for a girl like you for a long time," the woman says.

"For a long time, I've been hiding from people like you."

"What would you say if I told you I could help you find others like you?"

Natasha looks up. Adrenaline rushes through her body, but years of training keep her still and steady. The woman is old, Natasha can break her easily and escape into the vents, escape into the world. She'll be sorry to leave Clint but she's a girl of a lot of talents and can make it on her own. The woman shakes her head as if she's read Natasha's thoughts. "No, not like that. We have… a sisterhood here. It's taken me a long time to consider it that. We're known as another name, we've had other names before, but we're the best. We trained to take on other young women like yourself, but we've grown past that too."

"The Triad," Natasha says. She knows.

"Yes."

"You're pale imitations of us. You're _nothing_ like us, you're-"

"-not a Black Widow any longer, my dear girl," Peggy Carter tells her, because she knows who this woman is. Natasha has been trained to fight against everything this woman stands for, everything she has _stolen_ and _warped_ and-

And she's right.

Natasha is no longer Natalia, no longer bound to the bed and fed scraps and throwing up good meals. No longer killing or lying or fucking on orders.

Sometimes she binds herself to the bed, on days when her head feels like it's going to split open from two lives fighting a war in her head. Sometimes it's the only grounding she has, and when she comes back to herself, when Natalia fades into the depths again, Natasha wants to burn her bindings and makes herself sick on purpose to try and purge the ugliness out of her body.

Peggy watches as a thousand emotions swirl across and melt into the emotionless mask Natasha has worn over her face since she was seven years old, her sister's dying body limp in her arms.

"Will it make me… better?"

Peggy smiles.

Natasha starts small. She works with the operations academy. She has intimate knowledge of current Black Widow procedure, trains the ops classes on what to look for, what to listen for, how to assess a situation that may contain a Widow.

The women watch closely. Natasha doesn't know if it's because women grow up learning these skills as naturally as they learn to breathe, but the women learn to diffuse and subdue and deter and subvert in a matter of weeks. She sends the women on their way to what she hopes are eventual Triad invitations.

The men treat it as a game. They're lucky Natasha knows she's not supposed to kill any of them. It takes them longer to read her signals. Every step forward is six back, particularly when the women return and Natasha turns them loose on the men.

They learn. Eventually. It helps that they're under pressure to succeed and graduate.

But there's a still, small voice in Natasha's heart. It hopes they never have to meet a real Black Widow, or they'll never see another sunrise.

By the time Natasha is nineteen years old, she's stopped sleeping with her handcuffs most of the time. One night in fifteen, perhaps. She's putting on healthy weight, she's finally letting her hair grow long. Part of her is healing, knowing that there are agents in the field who can stop others like her. And at nineteen, it's been decided that there are enough women teaching Widow subversion in ops that Natasha can move on to teaching the Triad.

These women are good. Sometimes too good. Some days Natasha feels like she's back in Russia. Those days turn into handcuff nights.

Clint notices when Natasha starts to drop weight again. Clint calls in Peggy.

"What do you need?" Peggy asks.

Natasha is on the floor, her arms holding her knees to her chest. She feels tired and ill and caged. "I need to feel useful again," she says with a hollow voice.

Somehow-always-Peggy understands what Natasha needs.

Natasha is twenty when she and Clint are paired together. He knows her inside and out, he can ground her when she starts to slip into Natalia. STRIKE Team: Delta becomes a force to be reckoned with, the team called in when even Maria Hill can't strategize a smooth ops, the team without an exit strategy.

Natasha is twenty-two when she throws away her handcuffs for good, and she's cleared to perform operations on her own. She takes on the codename Black Widow.

She reclaims it from them. They may have formed her, but she owns herself now. It's taken eight years, but she's bled most of her poisons out. It's time to show them exactly why they chose to name little girls after the things nightmares are made of.


	5. Sharon Carter (2003-2014)

Sharon Carter feels like she's going to throw up.

All she's wanted since she was a little girl was to be like Great-Aunt Peggy. She'd been raised hearing stories about her: the woman who had helped take down HYDRA, helped save the world alongside Captain America.

She played at being a spy when she was a little girl, chasing down the other kids on the block and calling them HYDRA goons. She made up stories, acting out the epic adventures of Peggy Carter, Captain America, and the Howling Commandos with her toys. She'd learned to shoot, learned to crack outdated codes. She even learned how to apply her lipstick perfectly-ignoring her mother's warning that fire engine red lipstick looked trashy.

Great-Aunt Peggy had worn it, so could she.

But now she's about to enter the S.H.I.E.L.D. academy-after three failed turns to get in, she'd finally been accepted after submitting a project on counterterrorism tactics in the digital age and how federal law would have to evolve to protect the constituents. She's here as Sharon Miller, she's still recovering from the shock of _finally_ being accepted, and she's going to hurl.

She could have used family connections to get in. Legacies existed for a reason, and if they'd known they were turning down the great-niece of a founder, the applications department would have been canned immediately. But she wanted in on her own merits, so she'd applied under her mother's maiden name.

It just took a few tries to get it right. And this would set the course of Sharon's entire career at the academy.

Two years is a rough goal, but she wants to match Melinda May and Maria Hill. Sharon piles on the coursework that first semester. She spends long nights in the library and tells herself that short sleeping hours will toughen her up when it comes to working in ops.

She fails three of her classes.

It takes another rough semester-more sleeping, less library, but also less social life-to scrape her grades back up to snuff, and then a summer of making up her failed classes before she gets the message. The academy is tough. If she wants to do this, she needs to be able to handle it. But to handle it, she needs to step off a bit.

Her two year goal winds up being five. Every day she passes the portraits of Stark, Phillips, and Great-Aunt Peggy: startled, stern, and encouraging. It's odd, but Sharon makes it into a mantra for herself: allow yourself to be startled, but handle events sternly and never forget encourage your fellow agents.

Even when she prefaces it with "This is a little bit weird, but…", she still gets odd looks from her classmates. But it works for her.

Sharon graduates with honors. She's seen many of her classmates come and go before her, but she put in the time and the work and has made her family proud.

Great-Aunt Peggy insists on being the one to hand her the diploma-and her Triad invitation. "Steadfast and strong perseverance in the face of the enemy-we take all kinds," Peggy tells her with a wink.

Sharon almost cries right then and there. She holds it in until they have a quiet family moment after the ceremony.

If the academy was rough, the Triad and working for S.H.I.E.L.D. are like sandpaper, but now Sharon is prepared. She's developed shortcuts during her time at the academy, tricks to help her learn faster. The matrons in the Widow Ops classes note her observance, her thirst for success and to prove herself. "You'll need that," one notes in her weekly feedback report.

Sharon is twenty-four. She's not Maria Hill, with the rules and the plans and sitting at Fury's right hand. She's not Melinda May, bravery and glory shrouded in quiet mystery. But she's good at what she does. She's an expert marksman, never missing a shot. She's good at following orders, but she can recognize faults and make assessments on her feet to readjust ops.

But it's her covers-her abilities to weave stories around herself and make them true-that catches Nick Fury's eye.

"It's genuine," he tells her in the meeting that makes her feel like her bones are going to dissolve. "I've been trying to figure you out for weeks, but damn if you can't fool a man six ways from Sunday. How's your disguise tech?"

Sharon finds her voice. "Generally not good, sir. I work best if I'm just me."

"Hmph." Fury sits back, his fingers steepled in thought. "You're a damn chameleon, Agent Miller."

She feels heat rising in her cheeks. "A-actually, sir…"

"No, I know. You think I got to where I am being a fool? You're Carter's girl, all right."

"Yessir."

"Knowing that I know this, does it make you want a new title any less, Agent Carter?"

Sharon looks up at him with confusion. "I don't understand, sir."

Fury gets up with a sigh, and paces over to the holo-wall. Since Tony Stark had begun freelancing for S.H.I.E.L.D. a few months ago, all of the tech in the building had undergone a serious upgrade. She'd heard a rumor that the first time he'd stepped into the Triskelion, he'd walked right back out and refused to come back until everything was upgraded. She wasn't sure if she believed that.

Now, Fury decrypts a file, and brings up digital paperwork that makes her mouth drop. Fury turns and crosses his arm, regarding her carefully. "We've been looking for an Agent 13 for a while now. Last one decided it was finally time to retire. She's in her nineties now, I suppose it's fair. Recommended a young woman to me, someone who was having some trouble finding her place but had a good heart. A heart that was in the work, that was _willing_ to work."

Sharon has to look down, now. Fury continues, "I've read your files, Carter. You sure screwed up a lot at the academy, and a not insignificant amount when you first started as an agent. But you got better. You learned your lessons, you fixed your mistakes. Hell, I'd take seven of you over one of my arrogant asshats who thinks he's God's gift to mankind."

"Thank you, sir," Sharon says quietly.

Fury '_hmph_'s again. "I've said nothing that needs thanking, just the truth."

"If I can ask, sir… What exactly does Agent 13 do?"

She's not sure if the sound Fury makes is a laugh, but his mouth twitches and he nods a few times. "Whatever the hell she wants to do."

Sharon is twenty-five when Steve Rogers is pulled from the ice. Great-Aunt Peggy's mind is starting to fail her now, so the news doesn't take. Sharon can't even arrange for a visit-will it help him relax? Will it set him off?-before there are _aliens_ in New York City. She doesn't even catch a break after that, because then Tony Stark is blowing up all of his tech in Florida and the vice president is being arrested for treason, and then Steve Rogers moves to Washington to work for S.H.I.E.L.D. full time with Natasha Romanoff.

Director Fury slides her an envelope one afternoon about a month after Rogers becomes a familiar sight in the Triskelion. It's an address and a key and a packet of information about her new cover. "I need you to keep an eye on him for me," is the only thing he tells her, and she figures the rest out on her own.

As she's putting together her new cover, in her new apartment across the hall from Captain America, she learns from Great-Aunt Peggy's nurse that he visits her three times a week. She can't introduce herself to him now, but the knowledge makes her treat him even more kindly than she already would have. It even helps her keep calm when Natasha Romanoff herself shows up at her doorstep one day, pretending she's a canvasser for the upcoming election.

But she's seen the way Natasha watches out for Steve. Sharon knows it's just Natasha's way of making sure he's all right at home, just like she knows about every time Natasha picks the locks on his doors or slides in through the windows when he's out. She doesn't think they're sleeping together, but she can't figure out what else they might be doing either. But Steve's in no danger from Natasha, so Sharon leaves it alone. The more people keeping an eye on him the better.

Great-Aunt Peggy's getting sicker, and Sharon divides her time between family and work. Ultimately, she blames her own distracted mind when Nick Fury is murdered ten feet from her doorstep and the whole world goes to hell.

But she knows one thing: Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff were right to do it. She managed to send out one last message before everyone went to ground: that S.H.I.E.L.D. was corrupted, get out while you still could.

She's too much of Peggy Carter's niece to want anything to do with a HYDRA organization.

So Sharon packs up her apartment and moves across town, takes her chameleon and sharpshooting abilities to the CIA, and rejoins the fray.

Because that's what Peggy Carter would have done.

* * *

**Thank you for reading. Reviews are always welcome.**


End file.
